#Elxn42: Voter Outreach Centre...A Name So Nice They've Used It Twice.

NoRoboInThese
RealCallsVille


Yup.

That's right.

The callers with the 'scripts' are back!

Mr. McGregor of the OCit has the story of the fine folks who, according to the courts, didn't do anything wrong in 2011 and most certainly aren't doing anything wrong now.

Here's his lede:

Telephone solicitors working for the Conservative party are again identifying themselves with the generic-sounding name “Voter Outreach Centre” in calls to potential supporters.

Websites that track unsolicited calls list numerous accounts from people who received these phone calls from numbers in Saskatchewan, Ottawa, British Columbia and the suburban Toronto area since the campaign began.

The name might confuse some voters, but the calls appear to be compliant with CRTC rules because they also refer to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and/or the Conservative party...


The hubris, no?


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#Elxn42...Is It Just Oil Co. Spin We Should Worry About?

WithAShillShillHereAndAShillShillThereHereAShillThereAShillEverywhereA

ShillVille

Remember when a whole lot of folks, except, of course, the usual suspects, became concerned that Chevron wanted to get its shill-swill into our public schools?

And remember how some of the folks whose job it is to cover the usual suspects inferred that those who were concerned were hypocrites for being concerned?

Or some such thing.

Well.

It turns out that Big Oil Co's aren't the only ones attempting to hide their shovelling of swill into the public sphere.

Martin Lukacs, writing in the Guardian, has the FOI-assisted story:

Canada’s Conservative government spent several million dollars on a tar sands advocacy fund as its push to export the oil faltered, documents reveal.

In its 2013 budget, the government invested $30 million over two years on public relations advertising and domestic and international “outreach activities” to promote Alberta’s tar sands.

The outreach activities, which cost $4.5 million and were never publicly disclosed, included efforts to “advance energy literacy amongst BC First Nations communities.”...

{snippety doo-dah}

...According to the government documents, other outreach activities included research to support Canadian lobbying against a European environmental measure that would have hampered tar sands exports. Canada has succeeded in delaying the measure - the EU Fuel Quality Directive - several times.

The government also partnered with the International Energy Agency to “advance knowledge” about unconventional fuels like fracked shale gas, which several Canadian provinces have passed moratoriums against.

The documents were included in a July 2014 policy binder that was prepared for the incoming Natural Resources Canada Deputy Minister and revealed through a freedom of information (FOI) request...

{snippety doodle dandy}

...The documents indicate the government was funding dozens of projects between 2014 and 2015 to engage Indigenous communities and advance “Canada’s reputation as a global energy leader.”

Natural Resources Canada declined, however, to explain to the Guardian what these projects were...


Gosh.

Public money being used in an effort to promote private interests by bamboozling members of the public and the fine folks responsible won't tell us what, exactly, the nature of those public efforts were/are.

I think there is a name for that.

And I'm pretty sure it doesn't start with a 'd' and end with a 'y'.

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#Elxn42...Will Re-Drawing Of Riding Boundaries Matter For VanIsle Strategic Voters?

ConStoppingIn
LotuslandVille


If UVIC poli-sci guy Norman Ruff is right it will, indeed.

The VTC's Cindy Harnett has Mr. Ruff's take:

A hotly contested Conservative nomination race to represent Cowichan-Malahat-Langford on Vancouver Island is just a precursor to the battle ahead, says Norman Ruff.

“It’s going to be one of the closest fought on the Island,” said Ruff, a University of Victoria professor emeritus in political science.

The ridings on Vancouver Island have been redrawn for the Oct. 19 election, and Ruff expects most of the seven races will be tight ones between the Conservatives and the NDP as a result...


Mr. Ruff then goes into detail regarding the re-carving of the Esquimalt/Nanaimo/Cowichan/Langford/Malahat/Juan de Fuca ridings:

...The new Cowichan-Malahat-Langford riding, for example, includes parts of the old Nanaimo-Cowichan and Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca ridings.

In 2011, the NDP defeated the Conservatives by 6,775 votes in Nanaimo-Cowichan and 406 in Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca. If you use the 2011 votes with the 2015 boundaries, the NDP’s margin of victory is just 253 in Cowichan-Malahat-Langford, Ruff said. In the new Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke riding, the party’s share of the vote drops to 37.6 per cent from the 39.4 per cent seen in Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca...

Upshot....

Well, if Mr. Ruff is right, a non-Con vote wasted on the Liberals or Greens in ridings like this is a vote for Mr. Harper.

But here's the thing...

We have no hard riding-specific numbers yet, so it is really hard to know what's really up anywhere

And heckfire, in the case of the new Cow/Mal/Lang riding the Cons won't even nominate their candidate until August 29th apparently.


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And, as Paul Willcocks pointed out in the comments to a recent post, strategic voting did matter in the old Esquimalt riding last time.
Bill Tieleman, in the Tyee, is kinda/sorta making a similar point based in large part on the '2nd place' Dipper factor in FedCon-won ridings last time out...Again, the proof will be in the pudding of real riding-specific polls in the coming weeks...


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#Elxn42...These People.

PublicChoiceTheoryGoneWild

StraussianismsRHimVille

"...These people are not honourable. Indeed, they laugh at honour. They cherish the low blow, the devious tactic, the unprincipled bribe, in a relentless, sneering, partisan tone. People I know and like retweet Pierre Poilievre with vicious glee. I weep for them and my country..."

John Robson, NaPo, Aug 7/15

And, in case you missed it, Mr. Robson is no closet pinko.

But, interestingly, he thinks Mr. Harper actually is.

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Tip 'O The Toque to Owen Gray over at Northern Reflections.

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Elxn#42....FedCon-Stopping In Lotusland.

AllTheStrategiesThatFit
Riding-By-RidingVille


Elizabeth McSheffrey has a primer up on how 'Strategic Voting' can be used to help defeat the Conservative Reform Alliance Party (of Peter MacKay's big give away) in British Columbia in the Vancouver Observer.

Here is her lede:

It’s still early in the polls, but so far it looks like B.C. may host some of the most competitive party races in the country.

According to the most recent data from threehundredeight.com, the NDP lead in B.C. with just over 40 per cent support, followed by the Conservatives at 27.7 per cent, and the Liberals at 23.2 per cent. The Greens trail in fourth with 7.9 per cent.

Anything can happen between now and the Oct. 19 election date, but pollsters and academics are advising B.C. voters early that every seat will count for those hoping to unseat the Harper government.

“It’s a very different ball game for the Conservatives from what we saw in 2011,” said Mario Canseco, vice president of public affairs for polling company Insights West.

“The fact that the NDP has peaked so soon might mean a lot of people who have been thinking about voting for the Liberals and the Greens might reassess their votes and look at Mulcair as the best alternative to topple the government.”....


And the key to this if we really want to do it?

And by 'we' I mean the 65% plus of Canadians who want a different government.

Well, we can NOT look at National, Provincial or even Regional numbers.

Instead we've got to look, hard, at things riding-by-riding.

Now.

So far there are all kinds of 'what once/what if/what may' happen-type synopses out there, but very little in the way of (publicly available) hard numbers.

We'll start trying to track it all, with rationales for where we think nose holding really might help (and, just as importantly, where it likely won't) starting next week.


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And, yes, I do recall why the good Mr. Canseco mentioned above is now at Insights West rather than that other polling shop he used to work for.
And as for the FedCon-Stopping analysis/rationale thing?...Ya...Have done that before too.


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#Elxn42...Man In Blue Suit Gags Everyone, Everywhere.

BothSides
Don'tVille



From Elizabeth Thompson's latest in iPolitics:

Members of the public who attend Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s campaign events are being required to agree to a gag order before they can walk through the door, iPolitics has learned...

{snippety doodle dandy}

...On Tuesday, veteran Queens Park reporter Susanna Kelley was refused entry to a Harper campaign event. While she arrived 20 minutes before the start of the event, she was told she could not enter because RCMP sniffer dogs were not available to check her out...


Gosh.

Aren't all Canadian citizens....errrr....'taxpayers'  helping to pay for this (extra) long election and all its campaigning?



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Just two sides?....In my opinion, absolutely...In other words, don't kid yourself because 36% for the MITBS could win the thing if the three groups on the other side stays splintered...OK?


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Can Climate Change Mess Up A Perfectly Good Trailer Trash Theme Party?

AllTheBukowskiThatHates
KayaksVille


You bet it can.

As only he can, Mr. Beer 'N Hockey explains.


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Darn day job (stretching into night) is getting in the way of a first week/first pass analysis of what needs stratting and what doesn't in Lotuslandian fed elxn ridings...The post is coming...Hopefully by the weekend.


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Underdog Victorious...Schoolteacher Successfully Buys Off Presidential Candidate.

StaySternForBern
NotExhumingMcCarthyVille


Is it real or is it eye-watering Memorex?

BURLINGTON, VT—After accepting a check sent to his campaign office by a local elementary school teacher, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was roundly criticized Monday as being firmly in the pocket of the high-rolling educator who had donated $300. “He might have the reputation of being the people’s candidate, but when your candidacy is effectively bankrolled by the multi-hundred-dollar donation of a fourth-grade teacher, it’s clear who’s really pulling the strings,” said political analyst Peter Mathews, who noted that when a check arrives with a handwritten note that says “Behind you 100 percent, Bernie!” it comes with certain expectations....

****

Meanwhile, in Canuckistan some folks have apparently already bought all they need.

And then some.

Mychaylo Prystupa has that story in the National Observer:

The Harper government chose the Friday afternoon of a long weekend, just before the Sunday launch of a federal election, to appoint a paid Kinder Morgan consultant to the National Energy Board (NEB) in a timed press release that critics say was an attempt to bury the news.

Conservative Minister of Natural Resources Greg Rickford issued a Friday 12:30pm EST news release announcing that Calgary-based petroleum executive Steven Kelly will become a full-time board member of the federal agency that helps cabinet decide if oil and gas pipelines go forward.

Mr. Kelly's consulting firm was hired by Kinder Morgan two years ago to prepare an economic analysis justifying the $5.4-billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. Mr. Kelly himself, in his capacity of vice president of IHS Global Canada, authored and submitted the 203-page Kinder Morgan report to the National Energy Board...



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Underdog Victorious?....It's a tune of pure joy by she who sang about having kissed a girl first, Jill Sobule.
And remember...If you know young whippersnappers that are concerned about us allowing fine folks like former Bush Ranger Bobby Kinder to do what ever they want in the Great White North without proper oversight and regulation....Well, there is only one real solution to that...You must convince them they have to VOTE!


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#Elxn42: Hey, You Kids...Get On Our Lawns!

WeDon'tWantToArgueWithThemAnymore
WeWantToWinVille


Young Lotuslandian PoliSci guy David Moscrop wrote the following awhile back in an OpEd for Postmedia:

...(T)he 2011 federal election saw 75 per cent of Canadians aged 65-74 vote, compared to just under 39 per cent of those aged 18-24 — in lock-step with a trend that goes back at least a decade...

And what's my point, here?

Well....

It's all about the party preference splits, by age category.

Here's a recent take from Bruce Anderson's Abacus:

So.

Do you understand what this means?

Old progressive leaning people like me (and most of you) will not change the government on October 19th, at least not on our own, even if we manage get more of us out to the polls.

Instead, it's the kids we need to get out on our lawns, on their bikes/Car2Gos, and into a voting booth.

Because they want to vote to make the change, they just haven't been doing it.

OK?


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Young Mr. Moscrop's numbers are backed by data from Elections Canada...And I'm pretty sure you can carry this line of thinking out to those slightly older kids in the 25-34 age group as well...
Don't get me wrong, I, personally, still think there is something 'strategic' we old folks can do...More on that later...


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#Elxn42...I Want Merv's Canada Back Too.

TheHeartOfThe
MatterVille


From the kicker of Merv Adey's latest:

"...I grew up believing that Canada was a country where diversity was celebrated. I grew up with the Pearson ideal, of solving conflict through peacekeeping and the hard work of understanding differences. A country of fair play. Reality has never entirely matched up to the ideals, but we had the ideals.

Now I live in a country in which the governing party, divorced from even the Red Tory ideals of Hugh Segal or Flora MacDonald, will capitalize on our fear of strangeness. I live in a country where (a muslim) family, and the mother’s veil, are a political opportunity to exploit for the votes of the ignorant.

I want my old Canada back.

Vote."


Hard to argue with that, no?


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Hitchbot v. Philadelphia...Could There Have Been Any Other Outcome?

AllThingsConsideredI'dRatherNotHaveWC's
SchnozzVille


You've probably already heard about how that last bastion of Canuckistanian goodwill and whimsy, the world travelling 'Hitchbot', had the crap kicked out of it recently in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Which is a sad, and very tough-to-swallow, thing, indeed.

But then...

He-who-no-longer-blogs, but does live somewhere in or about the greater Philadelphia area, told us the following via the Twittmachine:

@RossK_ @revpaperboy Are you kidding? This is the city that booed Santa Claus. http://t.co/nhDPql4qaq

— Billmon (@billmon1) August 2, 2015

Gosh.

I feel a little better now.

I think.


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Meanwhile, Ms. Atwood wonders....


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Let The Voter Suppression Begin!

AllTheDatabaseApprovedValidID
ThatFitsVille


Here's the thing...

Robo-calling with a demonstrable nefarious purpose to pervert the Canadian democratic process did NOT begin in 2011.

Instead, it started in 2008.

In Lotusland:

...Like lots of other folks out here on the Western edge of Lotusland, I wrote extensively about the misdirection calls that were targetted at progressive types that would most likely have voted against the conservative, Gary Lunn, in the riding of 'Saanich and the Islands' during the federal election of 2008.

In fact, after following this forward through 2011 and beyond, I came to view this 2008 conning of the progressives in Saanich to be essentially 'ground zero' in the Robo-Real Call-based assault on Canada's democratic process.

And I never understood why, after complaints had been filed with the Saanich police, the RCMP and Elections-Canada, that the investigation was suddenly halted (which, of course, likely only served to embolden any and all future 'potential' perpetrators).

Well.

It turns out that, while Elections Canada determined that calls misdirecting progressives to a no-longer existent NDP candidate (and therefore, 'potentially', away from Mr. Lunn's closest challenger Liberal/Greeniac Briony Penn), they decided it wasn't worth pursuing because they they couldn't demonstrate that an actual voter was actually, for absolutely for absolute crystal-clear sure, misled.

Which, in my view at least, was an egregious dereliction of duty on the part of Elections Canada given the demonstrable fraud involved...

****

The real take home message, here?

They test-ran the thing seven years ago...They rolled it in earnest out four years ago...They spent the last three years making much of it legal...And now we're in the final 11 week backstretch.

Which means that if the other two parties won't make sure that 37% (or less) doesn't win, maybe it's going to be up to us.

OK?



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And, yes, I am raising the spectre of 'Strategic Voting' once again...More on that later.


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Firedoglake..."It Was Perfectly Obvious Where The Energy Was."

YouThinkIt'sFunnyTurnin'
RebellionVille


There once was a time when Left Blogistan, particularly as it pertained to political goings on in the United States, was the place to go to find out what was really going on.

And while it would later suffer under the weight of bridges pulled down by the weight of (often its own) purity trolling, in the early days Firedoglake was one of the best corners of that place to hangout for all that defined the true excitement of blogging, which included the digging, the posts, the conversation-based commenting and the live-blogging.

To my mind, the highpoint came in early 2007 with FDL's deep and detailed coverage of the trial of one Scooter Libby.

Coverage that was so good that even the proMedia herd noticed. The following is from a piece by the NYTimes Scott Shane published at the time:

...All day long during the trial, one Firedoglake blogger is on duty to beam to the Web from the courthouse media room a rough, real-time transcript of the testimony. With no audio or video feed permitted, the Firedoglake “live blog” has offered the fullest, fastest public report available. Many mainstream journalists use it to check on the trial...

The thing is, even before that FDL founder Jane Hamsher knew that, just like punk, the real salad days blogging couldn't last when she wrote the following in 2006, back when the site was still running on blogspot with assists from a handful of fantastic contributors and a couple of Double-A batteries:

I was chatting with a good friend of mine today who went to high school with Jack Abramoff and remembers him simply as a "weird fat kid" and we got sidetracked onto the subject of blogs and cultural energy in general. We both concurred that the blog world has the feel right now that the punk rock scene of the late 70's had, and for much the same reasons.

The music business in the 70's had grown bloated and moribund and disconnected from its audience. Record executives busied themselves buying Rolexes for REO Speedwagon and paying millions for Casablanca records and nobody cared. They were perfectly horrified at the spectacle of kids paying $3 to see the Clash play a benefit for Marxist youth at the Geary Temple in 1978, but even as a kid it was perfectly obvious where the energy was, where the zeitgeist was shifting. Punk rock became a beacon for creative people of all walks, and oh so many years later the shadow it casts looms far greater than the corporate culture merchants of the time were able to envision.

It's not that the movie business or the book business or the magazine business is dead, or that the blog world is any challenge to any of them, but creativity is a very fluid thing and when it becomes difficult to achieve any kind of satisfaction in a particular medium the quality talent will siphon off into an arena that allows it expression. I could stand at a magazine stand for 24 hours straight, reading every issue on the racks and not come across the clever, relevant, insightful things I know I can find in a half hour on the blogs.

As a side note -- it's also apparent who hasn't been the beneficiary of this energy, and that would be in the right wing blogs. You can say my estimation is clouded by contempt but you would be wrong. I am perfectly able to appreciate and even (reluctantly) defend the filmmaking skills of people I loathe. I can count exactly two times I have ever read anything on the right even slightly insightful. For reasons too innumerable to go into right now, a philosophy that promotes totalitarianism and a system of endless repetition of someone else's talking points simply won't drawing the same quality thinkers. Period.

We thought punk rock and the energetic counterculture it produced would last for ever, but it didn't. It was over quite quickly.

Enjoy the blogs while you can. These are the salad days.


Anyway, by the time the first election of Mr. Obama rolled around in 2008 FDL was a force, pulling in 3 million hits a month while it raised money for progressive causes and candidates as well as raising its hardline progressive media profile all over the place.

And now it's done.

It will be interesting to see how the collective of new kids on the block, who have Ms. Hamsher's blessing, make out with their big-time new-media spin-off, Shadowproof.


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And as for the future of the dinosaurs with the single-shingle shops (i.e. bloggers like me)?...Well, it's still better than yelling at the TeeVee...


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Blogging For Supreme Court Dollars...All Your Hidden Agendas 'R Us.

TheInterwebzNever
ForgetVille


Both Glen McGregor of Postmedia and Sean Fine of the Globe have stories up about the scrubbed (and not-so) blog posts and associated commentary of Mr. Harper's latest Supreme Court nominee, Russ Brown.

Both note that one such comment has Mr. Brown pining for the super-secret Straussian fjords.

Or some such thing:

...(Mr. Brown's) sympathies with the Conservatives are clear. On Sept. 8, 2008, responding to a blog post describing Prime Minister Stephen Harper as “scary,” he said: “I don’t see it. Admittedly, I harbour some hope for a hidden agenda, but I doubt it’s going to happen.”....


So.

I guess the real question is....

Which of 'hidden' agenda was Mr. Brown kinda/sorta hoping for, exactly?


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The Keef Report...Shouting Fire In A Crowded Puffed-Up Pro-Media Theatre.

AllTheDrifts
ThatFitVille


And, just in case you think I must have been joking or, at the very least, playing the snark card with that header...

The following is the lede from Mr. Baldrey's latest Glacier (print) Media column:

This province is being ravaged by forest fires this summer, but there’s a good chance an entirely different kind of firestorm will be confronting B.C. by the time next summer comes along.

Brace yourselves for a series of political protests that will undoubtedly include a massive amount of civil disobedience, but which may also in some cases drift to the extremes of sabotage and violence...


And why does the good Mr. Baldrey make such a statement about what 'may' happen regarding extremes of 'sabotage' and 'violence'?

Apparently it has to do with the 'rhetoric' we've heard from 'various' Site C dam opponents and the fact that Anonymous reacted strongly to a police shooting.

All of which leads Mr. Baldrey to further state:

...The protests against the Kinder Morgan pipeline that occurred earlier this year on Burnaby Mountain will look like a pale imitation of what will happen should the project gain approval and construction actually begins...

****

Now.

There can be no doubting that the protests against Kinder Morgan earlier this year were indeed vigorous and that they also included well-documented acts of civil disobedience.

But ask yourself the following...

Was anything (and I mean anything) in those most vigorous, and dare I suggest effective, protests either violent or verging in anyway whatsoever on sabatoge?

Of course, if a(n idiot) blogger were to just make stuff up about violence and sabotage....

Well?


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Merv Adey suggests topics of substance that actually matter that Mr. Baldrey might want to consider for his next column...Here.
Previous Keef Reports can be found...Here.


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